Prediction markets on Augur — regulated by SMART CONTRACTS! — will solve all ambiguities, and replace lawyers, courts and the spirit of the law! Augur ran a bet on “Which party will control the House after 2018 U.S. Midterm Election?” The Democrats won the election — but the “reporter” on the question is saying technically it’s still the Republicans, since it’s not January yet. The reporter is “truly sorry for any damage to traders, or to the Augur Community as a whole for this ambiguity” — but not so sorry as not to be this obtuse and obnoxious. There’s also gossip of him accepting bribes for this outcome — an obvious prediction market strategy I noted in chapter 10 of the book. “Every story about D&D groups and their use of the ‘Wish’ spell turns out to be a more accurate prediction of prediction markets than any prediction market could itself produce” — erith.

The Block ran an article on the Blockchain Terminal ICO being a huge ripoff, run by a serial scammer and convicted hedge fund fraudster. The company objects, and has now sued Larry Cermak, who didn’t write the article, and not Frank Chaparro, who did, nor the site itself. The lawsuit is a crazy person rant that even admits the article is sourced.

Crypto hedge fund Pantera admits that maybe a quarter of the ICOs it invested in may have to give all the money back. “While we believe the vast majority of the projects in our portfolio should not be affected, approximately 25 percent of our fund’s capital is invested in projects with liquid tokens that sold to U.S. investors without using regulation D or regulation S.”

Gaming hardware manufacturers Razer have an incredibly scammy deal, where they give you Razer Silver tokens to buy hardware with — if you run their crypto mining software. This is just a front end to Razer’s NiceHash account. Also, it’s a reskinned version of a similar mining software scam run by a couple of other companies associated with Razer. From the FAQ: “My antivirus software reports Razer SoftMiner as a virus. Is Razer SoftMiner a virus?” “Razer SoftMiner is not a virus or a malware — we use open source libraries to build Razer SoftMiner.”

Bitcoin bomb threats are smart in the same way buying drugs on the darknet is — “Pay me ransom in a way that allows third-party verification of my identity via unalterable cryptography, or the puppy gets it.”

Corey Miller on the EOS Death Spiral. The break-even cost for block producers is $4 per EOS — and it’s currently trading around $2.

The Worst Narrative In Cryptocurrencies: “Governments are big bad terrible entities that will print money and ruin society and we can create a better form of decentralized money that won’t inflate our living standards away.” It turns out this isn’t how anything works.

If you’ve got a problem that can’t possibly work, you should give us money to apply a solution that can’t possibly work! From PricewaterhouseCoopers in February, the worst future: “Brexit could be the trigger the UK needs to embrace the fourth industrial revolution and unlock the potential of blockchain.”

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The content of this site is journalism and personal opinion. Nothing contained on this site is, or should be construed as providing or offering, investment, legal, accounting, tax or other advice. Do not act on any opinion expressed here without consulting a qualified professional. I do not hold a position in any crypto asset or cryptocurrency or blockchain company.